I had the privilege of meeting Roberto Echeto when he was in Iowa City as part of the International Writing Program’s 2018 cohort. At the Spanish-language IWP reading shortly after the writers arrived, I listened, delighted, as Roberto read prose poems that touched on everything from Anish Kapoor to Greek mythology. I left the reading without introducing myself, certain that someone in the translation workshop offered in conjunction with the residency had already leapt at the chance to work with him.
    But for a variety of practical reasons, the translator paired with Roberto ended up being me. Roberto sent me a series of interconnected poems that I think could (should?) be read as one slyly, chillingly, intergalactic epic poem. One afternoon, I walked into Java House, a draft of my translation in hand, and unleashed a barrage of questions. As we moved through the poem(s) stanza by stanza, he proved to be the kind of writer translators dream of—patient with the hyper-specific questions I’d squeezed into the margins of my draft, thoughtful and thorough in his responses, and ready to see the translation as a new piece of writing whose conversation with the original could sometimes be bidirectional.
The poems included here are not that work; they’re part of a “Fotomontajes” project  I translated selections from after the residency had ended, and Roberto had flown home. The conversation we began at Java House continued over email. I would press “Send” on a batch of queries after midnight in Iowa City, and he would respond the following day from Caracas. Both of our Iowa City chapters have now come to a close but the conversation continues.

--Jennifer Shyue